‘I’m getting tired of watching my people falter’: B.C. residential school survivor reflects on life

'I am getting tired; tired of treading water, tired of watching my people falter when we could be prosperous.'

Roger Hall attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1966 to 1974, but when he’s called a survivor, it doesn’t ring true.

“I’ve not survived it because the storm isn’t over yet,” Hall said.

“It’s still here and it’s every day where you’re, pretty much, treading water. I hope it ends soon because I am getting tired; tired of treading water, tired of watching my people falter when we could be prosperous.”

Just ahead of Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, that seems especially worth noting. Just as Hall doesn’t yet see himself as a survivor, he hasn’t yet experienced reconciliation.

For that, he said those responsible still need to own up to the harms inflicted on Indigenous people, he said.

“Own up to the wrong that when you raped people like myself when you held your hand over my mouth and didn’t allow me to scream out and yell. (You) let me live in fear and pain for so many years,” he said.

Kamloops Indian Residential School was run by the federal government and the Catholic Church between 1874 and 1966.

The system was designed to remove Indigenous children from their families and assimilate them into Euro Canadian culture. Hall had just finished Grade 1 when he was taken from his family and sent there alongside six brothers and a sister.